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That Vegan Life

In 7th grade home ec (rebranded Family and Consumer Science by that time #politicalcorrectitude), our class watched a movie on vegetarianism. I don’t remember much of the movie except that it upset and inspired 12 year old me to declare my new resolution to become vegetarian. I was even committed enough to get some books from the library on being vegetarian and eating well! The only flaw in my plan was that during this phase of my life (ages 0-20) I ate approximately 0 vegetables and pretty much sustained myself on fruit, meat, and carbs. In fact, this foray into vegetarianism coincided with Easter weekend (a.k.a. the Catholic Ham Holiday) and, since I did not partake in any of the side dishes full of veggies, my meal consisted almost entirely of potato chips. And chocolate. Because Easter candy… NEEDLESS TO SAY, my first meat free diet attempt did not go well or last long.

About a year ago, Collin and I decided to “go local” i.e. we tried to only buy meat and eggs from local farms. We decided to do this because it helped to make us much more aware of what we were consuming, not only for our own health, but so that we did not take the lives of farm animals for granted. We got our meat from a farmer who worked with Collin and we got eggs from my coworker who was living on her boyfriend’s parents’ farm (which was a GREAT system). The main comment we heard from people was that eating local was expensive and that’s true, it is more expensive. So we started to eat less meat and we really enjoyed it when we did. On the nights that we did have meat for dinner, it was a big deal and that was kind of the point for us. It should be a big deal. We also tried to eat local when we went out which is where everything got a little fuzzier and where we yielded way more often to our food cravings. We would try to ask where the meat came from but slowly our convictions started sliding to ordering food with meat sourced from New York or Montreal (not really local) if it was from a good, organic, ethical farm, because that made it okay, right? Things just started being good enough and we would casually laugh it off and enjoy our pulled pork burritos or McDonald’s chicken nuggets.

Enter, Veganism. Collin got there first. He read a book loaned to us by our already vegan friends – Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran-Foer. I have not actually read the words off of these pages, but I have heard a lot of them read out loud and a lot of the points of the book were discussed at length in our house while Collin was reading it. I really should pick it up one of these days though. Essentially- it was the catalyst for Collin go make the leap to go vegan. I won’t speak for him as to his personal reasons for making the choice. They are similar to mine, but they are also different. I took another couple weeks to make the step on my own and it basically came down to this – I cannot ignore the fact that I believe killing and abusing animals for my consumption is wrong. Factory farming is a horrible, horrible system. Dairy cows and egg-laying chickens live awful, disgusting, and miserable lives. Those are facts. And I can’t and refuse to pretend like I don’t care about it anymore.

The most common reaction I have gotten to my “I’m Vegan!” announcement has been, “wow, that must be so hard” or some variation on that theme. Honestly, it’s not hard at all. Not when I believe this is the right thing for me to be doing. And I believe it so hard. Yea, it does suck eating salads when you go out with friends (which, luckily, is not the norm!) and yea, 100% I miss cheese but what I don’t miss is the guilty conscience and the needing the bury my feelings about it whenever I asked for extra parmesan. And cooking at home is a piece of cake with the internet! Just search vegan anything you want to eat and it exists. Trust me! We’ve had vegan buffalo “wings” twice!

Veganism is not for the faint of heart, I will say that. I couldn’t have lived this way 2 years ago and I feel very strongly that it’s a decision a person needs to make on their own for their own reasons. It is hard if you don’t care enough and I can’t fault anyone for that. AND SO 7th grade Katherine played the long game, who knew! She and I are very happy with where we’ve ended up.

SOME OF OUR FAVORITE VEGAN EATS:

Vegan Mac & Cheese – seriously I could stuff this in my face all day long, guys. Try it, you won’t regret it. Or notice that it isn’t cheese probably.

Bottom line, I being vegan feels AND tastes good and I am more than happy/willing to answer any questions you may have. Also there’s a lot more I could say on this subject so BE PREPARED FOR A SEQUEL POST.